What comes around
It so happens that, via a chance meeting a couple of years ago in a quite different context, this September I shall be setting off with an informal group of WW1 enthusiasts to tour a section of the battlefields of Verdun.
Our plan is that, on the way back to the Eurotunnel terminal at Calais, we shall stop off to ‘do’ the battlefield of Cambrai – often described as the first-ever significant tank battle in 1917 – despite the fact that the British had actually deployed tanks (unsuccessfully in that, through action and mechanical failure only 9 of the 32 deployed made it across No Man’s Land, let alone properly engaged the enemy) in an action at Fleurs-Courcelette on the Somme on 15th September 1916, some six weeks after the dreadful opening day of that extraordinary battle upon which they had taken some 57,000 casualties including over 19,000 dead.
Despite the fact that I have never spoken to or met two of my future companions on the expedition, I am greatly looking forward to it because I know very little about either of these key actions of WW1 and – as I told my ‘contact’ within the party yesterday when he rang to touch base – I shall be regarding myself as a blank sheet of paper and/or a large sponge (if that is not to mix my metaphors) soaking up received knowledge ‘on the hoof’ as we go, rather than someone who can contribute much by way of revelatory historical information to my colleagues.
I’m not making a case for history over other academic subjects here, but one of its most fascinating and compelling aspects – in terms of finding out and understanding what happened in the past – is the extent to which this ‘explains’ how human society got to where it is now. Furthermore, the human condition being what it is, you can bet your bottom dollar that someone somewhere has been in a similar situation to that which is occurring today – and just maybe how they dealt with it back then can illuminate the options for resolving today’s problem.
(That is, of course, if you ignore Albert Einstein’s dictum that the definition of insanity is ‘doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results’).
Henry Ford, meanwhile, is famous for describing history as ‘bunk’. However, in my view (and I know nothing about him apart from the fact he built cars) he wasn’t necessarily being quite as stark as it sounds: my angle would be that his simple point was that imagination and vision – rather than navel-gazing about the past – are the key motivators and tools for taking scientific and technological leaps forward.
From time to time archaeologists and historians made discoveries that seem genuinely exciting, even if not quite to the extent of heroes in the style of Indiana Jones.
I list now a couple of recent ones for the possible benefit of Rust readers:
Last night I was watching the BBC1 6 O’Clock News when it ran a piece about the chance finding of a set of Gainsborough drawings in an album of Sir Edwin Landseer’s work in the Royal Archives at Windsor.
Here’s a link to an article by Dayla Alberge on the subject that appears upon the website of – THE GUARDIAN
Secondly, here is a piece by David Keys, archaeological correspondent, on a dig on the island of Iona, that features upon the website of – THE INDEPENDENT
